I’ve just learned that Starbuck’s hair, which had been getting steadily longer, was not the expression of a sexist plot. I’d assumed that the producers or maybe the SciFi Channel had been forcing Katee Sackhoff to grow her hair longer in some kind of effort to “pretty her up” in stereotypical fashion. And this upset me because I thought she kicked ass with short hair, and I was disturbed by the implication that if she was being forced to grow her hair then it meant that they thought she wasn’t pretty enough…which would not bode well for her character’s future on the show. But I was entirely wrong about why her hair was longer.

JH: Is there nothing you’d wish for?
KS: Well, I do want Starbuck to have longer hair. I’ve had long hair my entire life. It’s really hard to chop your hair off and go to work and not feel like a boy.
JH: I like her short hair. How would you get long hair in the helmet?
JH: Same way Grace [Park] does!

In a longer interview with ComingSoon.net, the actress shared that the producers of Galactica were not pleased that she had been growing her hair:

Sackhoff revealed her appearance is going to change a little… well, okay a lot to her. “I just lost a huge battle with the producers as far as my hair and what length it should and should not be. So, it’s gonna be gone. Shorter than it was in the mini-series.” Like Natalie Portman in V For Vendetta short, we asked? “Yeah, kinda like that,” she explained.

That was a good interview. Let’s keep going for another paragraph:

“So that’s going to be happening, and Starbuck finds another man. I’m like what is that? They are mad at me when I called it ‘a soap opera’ in an interview. She’s sleeping with every damn guy on the show, how is it not a soap opera!? So, there is another man that comes into her life, and it is a very unlikely man that everyone is going to be so livid over. Okay, fine, you broke me, it’s Adama.”

So my expectation of who was pressuring who was ass-backwards. And so I find I was on the side of the producers, perhaps making me some kind of reverse sexist, pressuring Starbuck to look, as she said “like a boy”! Oh, my.